Undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze (2017)

thebulletin.org

51 pointsNokinside18 comments

I'm not a nuclear policy expert, but it is interesting to read about. My impression is that a lot of the improvements the Bulletin casts as destabilizing could also be viewed as deterrents against some escalation scenarios. For example, Russia has stated that it reserves the right to use battlefield nuclear weapons if it is losing a conventional conflict that threatens it's sovereignty. If our only response to that is to nuke their cities, then they may reasonably calculate that they can safely escalate to tactical nuclear options. On the other hand, if we can respond in kind or with other effective counterforce options, they will have to think twice. It sucks, but deterrence is still the only thing we have.

Undermining, possibly, but I don’t see how it can be even close to the point of collapse.

Even if the USA could launch an attack that takes out all Russia’s ground based ICBMs, Russia still would have those 500-ish submarine-based ones, wouldn’t it? If those ignore military targets, and manage to hit the top 100 largest population centers in the USA, everything larger than Spokane (population: 220k) would be hit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...)

I thought the same. Which ultimately leads me to ask - what is the point of this expensive and dangerous endeavour?

If you face an all out war on track to the worst outcome, 500 enemy warheads are better than 5000.

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed ..."

Russia's strategic submarine fleet is not the same as the US FBM force. USN boomers are deploying constantly, to the point where they have literally two different crews (Blue and Gold) to minimize the time the actual hulls stay in port (allowing them to spend roughly 2/3 of their service life at sea, an incredibly high utilization rate for a warship). Russian ballistic missile submarines generally average 1-2 sorties a year.

Now, the Soviet (and then Russian) solution to this was to eventually develop missiles that could reach the US from port, but guess what? That means that instead of a survivable, highly dispersed and hidden missile force, the vast majority of your missiles are massed together where a single warhead could take them out.

Russian strategic bombing forces are also pretty small (36 Tu-160's built, maybe half operational, and something like 60 Tu-95MS operational), so most of their nuclear deterrent comes from land based ICBMs. Note, however, that Soviets understood this and so built the SS-25 Topol, and there are about 100 of these road-mobile ICBMs operational today. (Along with ~130 silo launched missiles.)

The Bulletin kinda glosses over the road-mobile survivability. It isn't what America did, so people who are experts in American systems often don't pay sufficient attention to the advantages of such systems, in my experience.

> Because of the new kill capabilities of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the United States would be able to target huge portions of its nuclear force against non-hardened targets, the destruction of which would be crucial to a “successful” first strike. One such mission would likely involve the destruction of road-mobile ICBMs that had left their garrisons to hide in Russia’s vast forests in anticipation of attack. The garrisons and their support facilities would probably be destroyed quickly, and some of the dispersed road-mobile launchers would also be quickly destroyed as they were in the process of dispersing. To destroy or expose the remaining launchers, United States planners would have the nuclear forces needed to undertake truly scorched-earth tactics: Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest area where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed. This would be the equivalent of a circular area with a diameter of 100 miles.

> Such an attack would be potentially aimed at destroying all road-mobile launchers either as they disperse or after they have taken up position some short distance from roads that give them access to forested areas.

> Just 125 US Minuteman III warheads could set fire to some 8,000 square miles of forest area where the road-mobile missiles are most likely to be deployed

Russia has over 3 million square miles of forest, and is over 6 million square miles total. 8,000/3,000,000 seems like pretty poor odds to get all the ICBMs hiding in the woods.

Road mobile systems deploy onto a set of prebuilt roads connected to their bases, they don't cross-country the impassable taiga since it's ... impassable. These are ballistic missile launchers, they don't fit under bridges, etc. so they can't just drive them around the Siberian interstate.

The MKZT-79221 that is the basis for both the Yars and Topol-M TEL is rated for driving off-road, and both TELs are even considered capable of launching off-road.

About half of the Russian mobile ICBM force are based in the Volga plain, and the Siberia based half are in mixed forest-steppe zones, because the Russians know their own geography.

This seems like a great way to increase the capability of your nuclear arsenal without adding more nuclear material / missiles. While I understand this tips the balance a bit in terms of lethality, I would consider it much less destabilizing than full-on development - not to mention much more friendly to the national budget.

A fascinating article. Thanks for posting. Currently reading "The making of the hydrogen bomb" by Richard Rhodes (a great follow-up to the Making of the Atomic Bomb, and these discussions are all super interesting.

As an undergrad back in the 80s I took a few classes on geo strategic planning, MAD and game theory etc. A few years later came to see that stuff as time wasted on useless classes.

But with a recent trend of undoing various interlocking systems designed to promote safety I wonder if we have a set of policy makers world wide who have forgotten or never knew the point of those complicated systems (e.g. overflights)

See, now, this is proper scary. A US pre-emptive nuclear first strike that could happen at any moment is something that really worries me.

The fact that the US appears to be optimising its nuclear arsenal to do this is frightening. And giving the Russians/Chinese less and less room to do the same is frightening. And then the US giving the keys to this decision to someone as egotistical, narcissistic and unstable as Trump, is really frightening. I can totally see him deciding to launch as a hissy-fit reaction to being impeached.

I think I'm going to rejoin the CND, if it's still a thing...

You assume the US undertaking a first strike is more likely than some kind of retaliation for some perceived slight by some other nuclear power, like Russia or China? That's... strange.

Historically those forgoing weapons were subjugated. If you want to be nonviolent to a fault, fine, but leave me out of it.

TFA is saying that the USA is optimising its nuclear arsenal for a surprise first strike capability.

Surprise first strikes work best if unexpected. So encouraging the President to throw a hissy fit and press the button is the best strategy if you're a nuclear general with rockets to launch. First strikes aren't retaliation. This is not escalation of a conventional conflict. This is out-of-the-blue, kill the other guy's ability to hit you. Think Pearl Harbour but with nukes.

If "having a fight" means we both die, then non-violence is the only answer. A nuclear war has no "winners". Being "subjugated" or "not-subjugated" is the same: generations of radioactive hell. Losing a conventional war is better than winning a nuclear war. So yes, non-violence please.

The President can't realistically order a first-strike and then cause it to actually happen. No matter who the President might be, no one in the armed forces, is going to go along.

For similar reasons, the President could not fail to launch a retaliatory strike if another nation launches a first-strike on the U.S.: the armed forces would force him/her to do so in that case. The best he/she could do is hold back until the first-strike is confirmed to the point where they can no longer hold back.

And whatever else you might think about the current President, he's been trying to extricate the U.S. from current wars, and he's declined opportunities to start a war against Iran or NK, so why would you be more afraid of him launching a first-strike than any other President? Ah, but you're not necessarily worried about Trump, but about a future President "as egotistical, narcissistic and unstable as Trump". Still, see above.

I hope you're right and a launch order out of the blue wouldn't be carried out. What about high-tension situations, though? President Trump has been warlike mostly on Twitter so far, but he is beyond doubt a very temperamental person, one who takes a very aggressive stand at times, and I could see him escalating conflicts very far, very quickly, unwittingly to a point where another side may interpret things in a way that favors a first strike. His cabinet and critical staff are have many very inexperienced people, it's been reported that State and Defense have lost many highly competent career civil servants to industry; all that might result in a very fast-evolving situation driven by people with very limited situational awareness and experience in such matters, without the personnel to effectively intervene. And, according to the article, the decision whether to take a Tweet alluding to, say, an impending first strike for face value or not, and whether to launch preemptively or not, would have to be taken within minutes. That's deeply scary.

Russia and China are developing missiles that are a major improvement on what they had? How does this not threaten stability? Is the bulletin afraid of President Xi?

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